It's political defeat, sure. Otherwice I don't see how anything changes.
Britain gets similar deal as Norway has. Not in a EU, but member of EEA (European Economic Area ) and EFTA (European Free Trade Association). There will be free travel, Britain will still pay for EU. Britain can even be participatory member in many EU institutions.
The only difference is that Britain has no vote. Since Britain has always been the one to rebel against and drag it's feet in EU, this might actually speed up decision making in EU.
It's very dangerous to assume the UK will get the same sort of deal as Norway. Norway has some unique cultural and exononomic attributes that are very different from the UK.
Whilst it is in the interest of the EU to have a trade agreement with UK, the UK does not have a strong negotiating position.
Why would EU member states do anything to help a country that is destabilising the entire EU project.
The UK was paying 0.3% of their budget for control of 9% of the European Parliament. Following the Norway model, they will keep paying a similar amount of money but control 0% of the parliament.
Excellent choice, my dear Britons, excellent choice.
>Why would EU member states do anything to help a country that is destabilising the entire EU project.
It's not help. It's for the benefit of everyone. The whole point of EU is that it's not zero-sum game.
Britain's negotiation position is weakened, but other EU countries want to get access into British markets just as much as Brits want to get into EU markets.
In the past, it was always Britain vs. Germany and France because Britain was the problem child. As from now, Britain has more possibilities to align closer to Germany OR France -- which may possibly divide the partners, especially because German-French relations have been strained in recent years. The time of Mitterand and Kohl holding hands like lovers has gone.
I'm just skeptical about this supposition that a firmly united Europe is going to wipe the floor with the UK. This is not some 5 million people nation that you're going to boss around a bit. The UK has one of the longest running systems of government in the world with a diplomatic tradition going back to the power games of 19th century Europe. It has strong ties to the Commonwealth and the United States. While negotiating with the EU it only needs to look after its own interests. Opposite the UK stands the EU consisting of 27 nations, all with their own interests, many of which have to deal with their own eurosceptics at home. There's been mounting discontent about the domineering role of Germany. I believe that things may become very interesting.
> EU influence is precisely what has just been voted out.
I said "it's in the interest of the EU to keep the UK in its area of influence." and I don't remember the EU voting to kick out the UK, but quite the other way around.
The EU will work towards keeping the UK close and rebuilding any lost synergies. The problem (for the UK mainly) is that they won't do it at any cost. That means no sweeteners at all. The UK can take it or leave it, but they will not be getting anything better than what they had - and they will keep all the obligations they had (free movement of people and other regulations they wanted to "take back").
Unfortunately that might just grow UKIPs electoral base as they'll feel legitimized to keep blaming the EU for any UK issues. This is what happens when you (Thatcher - if you don't know her just remember she was Pinochet's friend) create a non-working class with nothing to lose that lives out of benefits and then you proceed to destroy state education - you initially get them to vote you in exchange of your charity, until they feel entitled to charity and someone really populist comes around and channels their anger "because you threaten to reduce benefits or the immigrants are taking them... and their jobs, which hasn't existed since the 80s".
The UK is dangerously steering towards a fascist state and the only way to stop it is to improve education, which no recent government has been taking seriously.
Note: In case someone is looking for a flamewar, I'm not saying everyone that voted Leave falls into the demographic described above, but it is a very important demographic inside the UK and especially in North England, Wales and other impoverished areas.
> Unfortunately that might just grow UKIPs electoral base as they'll feel legitimized to keep blaming the EU for any UK issues.
How would the UKIP be blaming the EU once the UK is out? Whatever the deal the EU offers, good or bad, it's a deal which will be accepted by the UK, a sovereign state. It will not be imposed. Hard to see how they can blame the EU for defending their interests, since I assume the UK will be doing the same.
The only possible explanation here is that the EU is able to force the UK to accept a "bad deal". But that directly contradicts the UKIP narrative, that "the UK is a strong nation, and all regions around the world will be ready to sign deals with it".
I'd be very cautious in assuming this. I suspect that Germany and France in particular are going to try to figure out how to make sure the UK gets a deal that will make other countries think twice from leaving again. That's assuming that this actually happens, of course. David Cameron showed that, at the end of the day, he wasn't actually willing to invoke Article 50, and even Boris Johnson seems to be waffling now.
And even if the UK does get the same deal as Norway, that means they'll have to abide by EU policies and regulations, but they won't get a vote in the matter - that's not going to be very palatable to the UK.
There are going to be a lot of unhappy Leave voters if that happens, though. The main thrust of the Leave campaign seemed to be about immigration and controlling our borders.
>The EU is pissed at the UK right now and will not make it easy for them.
There are attempts to anthropomorphize the situation to sell the news. There is no indication whatsoever that this narrative is true.
In the end it's just another negotiation to get things going. Interests and offerings determine the positions. Working together gets UK and EU into where they both want and expands the pie.
And one important factor - an “interest“ if you will - is to make cristal clear what are the beneffits of EU membership. So, if “trade with UK“ has weight 10, and “survival of EU“ has weight 1000 (the exact numbers will vary), you have quite an interesting point for your negotiations to start.
Collapse of EU would be disaster for everyone. If UK suffers -900 and Germany -1100 there is nothing to bargain.
Close trade ties with EU are net win for both sides.
70% of British parliament and even bigger percentage of those who are negotiating deal with EU voted against Brexit.
A sweet deal for the UK is automatic EU collapse. So that's out of the table.
A clean deal with the UK, which means tabula rasa, out of the EU and then a deal on equal footing, is the only acceptable deal. That could mean indeed a deal as Norway has, with the same rights and obligations. But I would argue that this is worse than what the UK had up to now.
But what I was essentially arguing with my comment is this comment of yours:
> There are attempts to anthropomorphize the situation to sell the news
It is a matter of being "pissed off", in the sense that this has a big weight in the negotiations: the EU needs to make clear that there is no free lunch.
Britain gets similar deal as Norway has. Not in a EU, but member of EEA (European Economic Area ) and EFTA (European Free Trade Association). There will be free travel, Britain will still pay for EU. Britain can even be participatory member in many EU institutions.
The only difference is that Britain has no vote. Since Britain has always been the one to rebel against and drag it's feet in EU, this might actually speed up decision making in EU.